% FROM THE NOAM CHOMSKY ARCHIVE
% http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu:/usr/tp0x/chomsky.html
% ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/user/cap/chomsky/
% Filename:    articles/chomsky.z.victors-part3
% Title:       The Victors, Part III
% Author:      Noam Chomsky
% Appeared-in: Z Magazine, April 1991
% Source:      ACTIV-L listserver file CHOMSKY VICTORS3
% Keywords:    Latin America, Cold War, new world order
% Synopsis:    Consequences of the Cold War in US dependencies
% See-also:    

                      THE VICTORS, PART III
                          Noam Chomsky
                     Z Magazine, April 1991


In the first two segments of this series, I raised the question
that at once comes to mind amidst the cheers for the glorious
victory of the West in the Cold War: how are the victors faring
at the moment of their triumph? A survey of the domains of the
state capitalist industrial societies provides a stark answer: we
find an ``unrelenting nightmare,'' in the accurate words of those
who have enjoyed the kind tutelage of the West. The catastrophe
of capitalism could not be more vivid and dramatic.

Notice that the question raised is precisely the right one. One
will learn next to nothing from a comparison of Eastern and
Western Europe. In contrast, it is quite reasonable to compare
regions that were more or less similar in relevant respects 80
years ago, but have since followed a different course:
subjugation to Leninist-Stalinist tyranny and its aftermath (the
USSR and Eastern Europe), or domination by the state capitalist
democracies (the conventional Third World).

Neither of these regions is homogeneous, and their prior
histories differ as well. But to a first approximation, it is
reasonable to describe large parts of both regions, before World
War I, as roughly comparable in social and economic development,
and relation to the West. At the time, Russia was developing,
though it was far more backward than Western Europe and not
closing the gap, and by 1914, ``becoming a semi-colonial
possession of European capital,'' historian Teodor Shanin
observes. Making a similar point, economic historian Alexander
Gerschenkron notes that ``in 1913, that is, thirty-five years
after Bulgaria's liberation, nearly 80 percent of all the plows
used in Bulgarian farming were most primitive wooden
implements,'' and in the 1930s, ``wooden plows were still more
numerous than the iron ones.'' Similar observations hold
generally, so it appears, though comparative studies seem to be
few. {note: Shanin, _Russia as a `Developing Society'_ (Yale,
1985), vol. 1, 186f., quoting D. Mirsky, _Russia, A Social
History_ (London 1952), 269; Gerschenkron, _Economic Backwardness
in Historical Perspective_ (Harvard, 1962), 216.}

It is therefore of some interest to ask how Guatemalan peasants
or Brazilian slum dwellers would react, were they to find
themselves suddenly transported to Poland or Bulgaria or the
Ukraine. We learn a good deal about ourselves by pursuing the
inquiry, and also by observing how the obvious questions are
stifled and eliminated in the chorus of self-adulation.


Some Unheard Voices

The victims, of course, do not join the chorus, but as always,
their voices remain unheard. Thus, there is much pretense of
concern over the murder of the Jesuit intellectuals in El
Salvador, but it does not reach as far as attending to anything
they say on any topic, including this one, even though---or
rather because---one might learn a good deal from the exercise.
On the question at hand, the journal _Proceso_ of the Jesuit
University UCA in San Salvador, where the priests were
assassinated, has this to say:

   The so-called Salvadoran `democratic process' could learn a
   lot from the capacity for self-criticism that the socialist
   nations are demonstrating. If Lech Walesa had been doing his
   organizing work in El Salvador, he would have already entered
   into the ranks of the disappeared---at the hands of `heavily
   armed men dressed in civilian clothes'; or have been blown to
   pieces in a dynamite attack on his union headquarters.  If
   Alexander Dubcek were a politician in our country, he would have
   been assassinated like He'ctor Oquel!  [the social democratic
   leader assassinated in Guatemala, by Salvadoran death squads,
   according to the Guatemalan government]. If Andrei Sakharov had
   worked here in favor of human rights, he would have met the same
   fate as Herbert Anaya [one of the many murdered leaders of the
   independent Salvadoran Human Rights Commission CDHES]. If Ota-Sik
   or Vaclav Havel had been carrying out their intellectual work in
   El Salvador, they would have woken up one sinister morning, lying
   on the patio of a university campus with their heads destroyed by
   the bullets of an elite army battalion.  {note: Quoted by Jon
   Reed,_Guardian_ (New York), May 23, 1990.}

The comparison between the Soviet and U.S. satellites is so
dramatic that it takes real dedication not to perceive it, and
outside of Western intellectual circles, it is a commonplace. A
writer in the Mexico's leading daily comments on the ``striking
contrast'' between Soviet behavior toward its satellites and
``U.S.  policy in the Western Hemisphere, where intransigence,
interventionism and the application of typical police state
instruments have traditionally marked Washington's actions'':
``In Europe, the USSR and Gorbachev are associated with the
struggle for freedom of travel, political rights, and respect for
public opinion. In the Americas, the U.S. and Bush are associated
with indiscriminate bombings of civilians, the organization,
training and financing of death squads, and programs of mass
murder''--- not quite the story in New York and Washington, where
the United States is hailed as an ``inspiration for the triumph
of democracy in our time'' (_New Republic_). {note: John
Saxe-Fernandez, _Excelsior_, Nov. 21, 1989, in _Latin America
News Update_, Jan. 1990; _TNR_, March 19, 1990.}

A prominent Latin American theologian, Pablo Richard, also fails
to see matters as he is informed he does by the _New Republic_
commissars. Richard is professor of theology at the National
University of Costa Rica and a leading figure in the formation of
the base Christian communities, a prime target of the U.S.-backed
savagery of the Reagan-Bush years (enthusiastically supported by
the _New Republic_ and others who now bask in their inspiring
triumph) because they sought to organize the poor, threatening to
bring democracy and social reform, the ultimate crime. Richard
compares the current situation of the Third World to that of the
early Christians under the Roman Empire, which Christians saw as
``the Beast, a murderous idolatrous Beast,'' who could not be
confronted with force, because it is far too powerful and
violent, but must be confronted ethically and spiritually: ``This
new way of confronting imperialism in the decade of the `90s,
which emphasizes cultural, ethical, spiritual, and theological
confrontation, challenges in a special way the [Christian base
communities] and the Church of the Poor,'' Richard writes. {note:
_Pasos_, publication of the Ecumenical Department of
Investigation in San Jos, Costa Rica; _LADOC_ (Peru), Nov./Dec.
1990.}

Others use different terms to express similar perceptions. The
essential points, again, are a commonplace outside of disciplined
Western circles, mired in ideological fanaticism and blind to the
elementary (but unacceptable) realities of the world.


Latin America and the Soviet Bloc

The social, economic, and ecological catastrophes resulting from
traditional Western imperialism and its more recent variants go a
long way towards explaining the reluctance of many in the Third
World to join the celebration of victory, and their tendency to
regard the victims of Soviet tyranny with a degree of envy.
Furthermore, the state terror faced on a daily basis by Latin
Americans who dare to raise their heads has been qualitatively
different from the repression in Eastern Europe in the
post-Stalin period, terrible as that was in its own ways; and
they do not share our reluctance to see the powerful and
systematic influence of Washington and U.S. corporations in
establishing and maintaining the grim conditions of their lives.

Another comparison that might be addressed is suggested by the
huge flow of capital from the Third World to the United States
and the West generally. Latin America alone transferred some $150
billion to the industrial West from 1982 to 1987 in addition to
$100 billion of capital flight, a capital transfer amounting to
25 times the total value of the Alliance for Progress and 15
times the Marshall Plan, according to Latin Americanist Robert
Pastor, director of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs for the
National Security Council under the Carter administration. The
Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland estimates that
between 1978 and 1987, some $170 billion in flight capital left
Latin America, not including money hidden by falsified trade
transactions. The _New York Times_ cites another estimate that
anonymous capital flows, including drug money and flight capital,
total $600 billion to $800 billion. This huge hemorrhage is part
of a complicated system whereby Western banks and Latin American
elites enrich themselves at the expense of the general population
of Latin America, saddled with the ``debt crisis'' that results
from these manipulations, and taxpayers in the Western countries
who are ultimately called upon to foot part of the bill. {note:
Pastor, _Foreign Policy_, Winter 1988--9; Jeff Gerth, _NYT_, Feb.
12, 1990.}

Again, the situation in the Soviet satellites is different. One
commentator on their affairs, Lawrence Weschler, observes that

   Poles, like most Eastern Europeans, have long lived under the
   delusion that the Soviets were simply bleeding them dry; in fact,
   the situation has been considerably more complex than that. (The
   Soviet dominion was in fact that unique historical perversity, an
   empire in which the center bled _itself_ for the sake of its
   colonies, or rather, for the sake of tranquility in those
   colonies. Muscovites always lived poorer lives than Varsovians.)

Throughout the region, journalists and others report, shops are
better stocked than in the Soviet Union and material conditions
are often better. It is widely agreed that ``Eastern Europe has a
higher standard of living than the USSR,'' and that while
``Latin-Americans claim mainly economic exploitation,'' ``Soviet
exploitation of Eastern Europe is principally political and
security-oriented'' (Jan Triska, summarizing the conclusions of a
Stanford University symposium on the USSR in Eastern Europe and
the U.S. in Latin America). {note: Weschler, ``Poland,''
_Dissent_, Spring 1990; Triska, ``introduction,'' in Triska, ed.,
_Dominant Powers and Subordinate States_ (Duke, 1986).} In the
decade of the 1970s, according to U.S. government sources, the
Soviet Union provided an $80 billion subsidy to its Eastern
European satellites (while their indebtedness to the West
increased from $9.3 billion in 1971 to $68.7 billion in 1979). A
study done at the Institute of International Studies of the
University of California (Berkeley) estimated the subsidy at $106
billion from 1974 to 1984. Using different criteria, another
academic study by Paul Marer and Kazimierz Poznanski reaches the
estimate of $40 billion for the same period, omitting factors
that might add several billion, they note. When Lithuania was
faced with Soviet economic retaliation after its declaration of
independence, the _Wall Street Journal_ reported that the Soviet
subsidy to that country alone might approach $6 billion annually.
{note: Raymond Garthoff, _Dtente and Confrontation_, 499; M.
Marrese and J. Vanous, _Soviet Subsidization of Trade with
Eastern Europe_ (California, 1983); Marer and Poznanski, ``Costs
of Domination, Benefits of Subordination,'' in Triska, _op.
cit._; Peter Gumbel, ``Gorbachev Threat Would Cut Both Ways,''
_WSJ_, April 17, 1990.}

Such comparisons cannot simply be taken at face value; complex
issues arise, and they have never been properly addressed. The
only extensive scholarly study attempting to compare the U.S.
impact on Latin America with that of the USSR on Eastern Europe,
to my knowledge, is the Stanford symposium just cited, but it
does not reach very far. Among many striking gaps, the
contributors entirely disregard repression and state terror in
Latin America and the U.S. role in implementing it. Writing in
May 1986, the editor states that ``some left-wing forces in Latin
America and all dissidents in Eastern Europe have little hope of
bringing about substantive changes, either peacefully or through
violence.'' One contributor even takes seriously (though
rejecting) the absurd statement by Mexican writer (now Nobel
Laureate) Octavio Paz in 1985 that it is ``monstrous'' even to
raise the question of comparing U.S. policies with those of the
Soviet Union. Most take it as obvious, hence needing no real
evidence, that U.S. influence has been disinterested and benign.
In fact, this 470 page study contains very little information
altogether. {note: Triska, _op. cit._, 11; Paz cited by Jeffrey
Hughes, 29.}

Many questions would arise if such comparisons were to be
undertaken in a meaningful way. Contrary to standard conventions
(generally followed in the Stanford symposium), it is hardly
plausible to regard U.S. security concerns in Latin America as
comparable to those of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, or
even to take seriously the conventional doctrine that security
concerns are ``probably the greatest factor in shaping U.S.
policy toward Latin America'' (Robert Wesson, presenting the
``historical overview and analysis'' for the Stanford symposium).
In recent memory, the United States has not been repeatedly
invaded and virtually destroyed by powerful enemies marching
through Central America. In fact, its authentic security concerns
are virtually nil, by international and historical standards.
There are what are called ``security concerns,'' but as one
participant in the symposium finally concedes, after having taken
them quite seriously, ``U.S. national security interests in the
Caribbean [as elsewhere in the hemisphere, we may add] have
rested on powerful economic investments'' (Jiri Valenta)---which
is to say that they are termed ``security interests'' only for
purposes of the delusional system. Furthermore, it makes little
sense to attribute to the United States greater tolerance for
``political-ideological deviations'' on the grounds that it does
not insist on ``the U.S. brand of democracy'' and tolerates
``authoritarian dictatorships,'' while the USSR insists on
Leninist regimes (Valenta). What the U.S. demands is an economic
order geared to its interests; the political form it takes is
largely an irrelevance. {note: Wesson, Valenta, in Triska, _op.
cit._, 63, 282.}

Unless freed from the extreme ideological constraints of
conventional scholarship, comparative study is bound to be
largely worthless.

The matter of capital flow is also complex. In the first place,
the regional hegemons are not remotely comparable in wealth and
economic level, and never have been, so that their role in
economic transactions will differ greatly. For another,
investment has intricate effects. It can lead to economic growth,
benefit certain sectors of the population while severely harming
others, lay the basis for independent development or undermine
such prospects. The numbers in themselves tell only a small part
of the story, and have to be complemented by the kind of analysis
that has yet to be undertaken in comparing Eastern Europe and
Latin America.

It should be evident without further comment that the standard
comparison of Eastern to Western Europe, or the Soviet Union to
the United States, is virtually meaningless, designed for
propaganda, not enlightenment.


Latin America and the NICs

Other subordinate and dependent systems have yet a different
character. Discussing the rapid economic growth of South Korea
and Taiwan after the powerful stimulus given by Vietnam war
spending, Bruce Cumings observes that it resumes a process of
development begun under Japanese colonialism. Unlike the West, he
notes, Japan brought industry to the labor and raw materials
rather than vice versa, leading to industrial development under
state-corporate guidance, now renewed. Japan's colonial policies
were extremely brutal, but they laid a basis for economic
development. Needless to say, these economic successes, like
those of Singapore and Hong Kong, are no tribute either to
democracy or the wonders of the market; rather, to harsh labor
conditions, efficient quasi-fascist political systems, and, much
as in Japan, high levels of protectionism and planning by
financial-industrial conglomerates in a state-coordinated
economy. {note: On these matters, see particularly Alice Amsden,
_Asia's Next Giant_ (Oxford, 1989), and for an overview, Amsden,
``East Asia's Challenge---to Standard Economics,'' _American
Prospect_, Summer 1990. For some recent reflections on Taiwan and
Japan, Carl Goldstein, Bob Johnstone, _Far Eastern Economic
Review_, May 3, May 31, 1990. Cumings, ``The origins and
development of the Northeast Asian political economy,''
_International Organization_ 38.1, Winter 1984.}

Comparison of the Pacific colonies of the U.S. and Japan is not
common here, but right-wing Japanese are not reluctant to pursue
it. Shintaro Ishihara, a powerful figure in the ruling Liberal
Democratic Party, which holds a virtual monopoly of political
power, observes that the countries that were once under Japanese
administration are ``success stories'' from the economic point of
view, while the Philippines are an economic disaster and the
``showcase of democracy'' is largely empty form. ``Philippine
landowners have accumulated incredible power and wealth,
siphoning everything from the ordinary people,'' while
``tradition is dismantled'' in favor of a shallow and superficial
veneer of American culture, ``an atrocity---a barbaric act.''
{note: Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara, _The Japan That Can Say
No_ (Konbusha, Tokyo), translation distributed privately, taken
from _Congressional Record_, Nov. 14, 1989, E3783--98.}

This spokesman for right-wing nationalism is plainly not a
trustworthy independent source. But there is more than a little
truth to what he says.

Comparison of the Latin American economies with those of East
Asia (the ``Newly Industrializing Countries,'' NICs) is another
topic that has rarely been undertaken seriously. Editorials, news
reporting, and other commentary commonly allege that the
comparison reveals the superiority of economic liberalism, but
without providing the basis for that conclusion. It is not easy
to sustain, if only because of the radical departures from
liberal capitalism in the success stories of Asia. As Alice
Amsden in particular has emphasized, the highly touted economic
successes of East Asia can be traced in no small measure to the
fact that the state is not only powerful enough to discipline
labor, as is the norm, but even to discipline _capital_, and to
compel sharp departures from market principles for the sake of
economic development. More generally, it is virtually the
conventional wisdom (and well supported) that ``late developing
countries'' typically rely on extensive state intervention and
coordination. In fact, it is hard to find any exception, late or
early. If the U.S. had kept to the principles it now imposes on
the ``developing world,'' we would probably still be pursuing our
comparative advantage in producing furs, and it is hardly likely
that we would ever have had, say, a steel industry. The same
continues to be true of advanced industrial societies, including
the United States, where the parts of the economy that remain
competitive benefit from huge taxpayer subsidies and a
state-guaranteed market (high tech industry via the Pentagon
system being the most striking case). In Germany, to mention only
one feature, the IMF estimates that industrial incentives are the
equivalent of a 30 percent tariff. IMF conditions and the like
are fine for weaker economies that we intend to exploit.  The
conditions greatly facilitate the robbery of the poor.  Beyond
that, their merits are less than obvious.

The comparison between Latin America and East Asia was addressed
at a conference on global macroeconomics in Helsinki in 1986.
{note: Tariq Banuri, ed., _No Panacea: the Limits of Economic
Liberalization_ (Oxford, forthcoming).} Several contributors
observe that the situation is complex, and conclude that the
disparities that developed in the 1980s (though not before) are
attributable to a variety of factors, among them, the harmful
effects of greater openness to international capital markets in
large parts of Latin America (as in the Philippines), which
permitted vast capital flight, but not in the East Asian
economies with their more rigid controls by government and
central banks. In South Korea, for example, export of capital can
carry the death penalty. Again, the standard story seems to be
virtually the opposite of the truth.

Comparisons and their Pitfalls

The complexity of the issues that arise is shown in a revealing
study of Indian development, in comparison to China and others,
by Harvard economist Amartya Sen. He observes that ``a
comparative study of the experiences of different countries in
the world shows quite clearly that countries tend to reap as they
sow in the field of investment in health and quality of life.''
India followed very different policies from China in this regard.
Beginning at a comparable level in the late 1940s, India has
added about 15 years to added life expectancy, while China added
10 or 15 years beyond that increase, approaching the standards of
Europe. The reasons lie in social policy, primarily, the much
greater focus on improving nutrition and health conditions for
the general population in China, and providing widespread medical
coverage. The same was true, Sen argues, in Sri Lanka and
probably Vietnam, and in earlier years in Europe as well, where,
for example, life expectancy rose rapidly in England and Wales
after large-scale public intervention in the distribution of food
and health care and expansion of public employment.

But this is not the whole story. In the late 1950s, life
expectancy in China plunged for several years to far below that
of India because of a huge famine, which took an estimated 30
million lives. Sen attributes the famine to the nature of the
Chinese regime, which did not react for three years, and may not
even have been aware of the scale of the famine because the
totalitarian conditions blocked information flow. Nothing similar
has happened in India with its pluralist democracy.
Nevertheless, Sen calculates, if China's lower mortality rates
prevailed in India, there would have been close to 4 million
fewer deaths a year in the mid-1980s. ``This indicates that every
eight years or so more people in addition die in India---in
comparison with Chinese mortality rates---than the total number
that died in the gigantic Chinese famine,'' the worst in the
world in this century.

In further confirmation of his thesis, Sen observes that life
expectancy in China has suffered a slow decline since 1979, when
the new market-oriented reforms were undertaken. Another relevant
example is the Indian state of Kerala, long under leftist rule
and with ``a long history of extensive public support in
education, health care, and food distribution.'' Here,
improvement in life expectancy is comparable to China, though it
is one of India's poorer states. {note: Sen, ``Indian
Development: Lessons and Non-Lessons,'' _Daedalus_, Vol. 118 of
the _Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences_,
1989. For further details on the Kerala exception, see Richard W.
Franke and Barbara H. Chasin, _Kerala: Radical Reform As
Development in an Indian State_ (Institute for Food & Development
Policy, Food First Development Report No. 6, October 1989).}


Human Values

These are all serious and difficult questions, with far-reaching
human consequences. The development strategies imposed upon the
Third World by Western power, implemented by the international
economic institutions or the states and corporations themselves,
have enormous effects on the lives of the targeted populations.
The record shows plainly enough that the policies that are
advocated or enforced by the Western powers, and the confident
rhetoric that accompanies them in official pronouncements and
other commentary, are guided by the self-interest of those who
hold the reins, not by any solid understanding of the economics
of development, or any serious concern for the human impact of
these decisions. Benefits that may accrue to others are largely
incidental, as are the catastrophes that commonly ensue.

As the collapsing Soviet system resumes traditional
quasi-colonial relations with the West, it is coming to be
subjected to the same prescriptions---in part by choice, given
the intellectual vacuity that is one of the consequences of
decades of totalitarian rule. But imposition of Third World norms
is bound to meet resistance. One Polish critic writes that if the
popular Chicago School

   words become flesh, this government would be the first in the
   history of the world to adhere firmly to this doctrine. All
   developed countries, including those (such as the Federal
   Republic of Germany) whose governments pay obeisance to the
   liberal doctrine, apply a wide spectrum of government
   interventions, such as in resource allocation, in investments, in
   developing technology, income distribution, pricing, export and
   import. {note: Mieczyslaw Mieszczanowski, _Polityka_, Dec. 16,
   1989, cited by Abraham Brumberg, _Foreign Affairs_, ``America and
   the World,'' 1989--90.}

If resistance follows the path often taken in the Third World, it
is likely to elicit the classic response.

On a visit to Europe a few days before he was assassinated by
elite government forces in San Salvador in November 1989, Father
Ignacio Ellacuria, rector of the University of Central America,
addressed the West on the underlying issues. You ``have organized
your lives around inhuman values,'' he said. These values

   are inhuman because they cannot be universalized. The system
   rests on a few using the majority of the resources, while the
   majority can't even cover their basic necessities. It is crucial
   to define a system of values and a norm of living that takes into
   account every human being. {note: _Envi\'o_ (Managua), May 1990.}

In our dependencies, such thoughts are subversive and can call
forth the death squads. At home, they are sometimes piously
voiced, then relegated to the ashcan in practice. Perhaps the
last words of the murdered priests deserve a better fate.